Biden administration: Patience ‘running out’ for Venezuela to back up election results

The Biden administration is ratcheting up its tone on Venezuela, pushing President Nicolás Maduro to publish automatically generated election results to back up his claims of winning Sunday’s election.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing Wednesday that the administration is reaching the end of its rope with Maduro’s deflections.

“Our patience, and that of the international community, is running out, running out. I’m waiting for the Venezuelan electoral [authority] to come clean and release the full detailed data on this election so that everyone can see the results,” Kirby said.

Kirby was referring to precinct-by-precinct printouts of election tallies, which Venezuela’s electronic voting machines automatically emit at the end of a voting day.

Those printouts, the opposition says, will show a landslide victory for Edmundo González, a former ambassador and the unified opposition’s presidential candidate.

The Venezuelan electoral authority (CNE) on Sunday declared Maduro the victor with 51 percent of the vote without publishing the precinct-by-precinct results generated by the voting machines.

Cuba, Russia, China and Iran quickly recognized the CNE’s decision, but left-leaning regional powers like Brazil and Colombia held out, calling on Maduro to produce the receipts.

The Biden administration expressed concerns over the discrepancies between the opposition’s accounting of the election and the official results, and demanded publication of the printouts, though U.S. officials did not stipulate a deadline.

Kirby’s comments, citing observers who’ve discredited the election, represent the first major escalation of the U.S. position since the vote Sunday.

“[You] May have seen the Carter Center, an independent observer, just earlier this morning, released a report stating that, quote, ‘Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic,’ that ‘the electoral authority’s failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles’ we share,’” Kirby said.

The Carter Center was allowed into Venezuela as an independent electoral observer. On Tuesday, the group released a statement panning the CNE’s “clear bias in favor of the incumbent.”

Kirby also noted a special meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday in Washington, called by Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the United States and Uruguay to address the election.

“I’m not going to get ahead of that meeting, of course; I would simply reiterate that the United States joined other democracies in the region and actually around the world, in expressing serious concerns about these subversions of democratic norms,” Kirby said.

Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.